Word: germanics
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...Reithofer is more upbeat. Faced with low-cost competition from Asia and Eastern Europe, he says, "many German firms did their homework, and now they are benefiting from it." He thinks Germany could go further, for example, in reducing high nonwage labor costs. But Germany still has competitive advantages, he says, pointing to its traditional engineering prowess combined with a newer ability to cater to the needs of individual clients. The challenge, he tells TIME: "It's all about mastering complexity...
...some ways symbolic of the resurgent German economy. For more than a decade, exorbitant labor costs, unbending union rules and an addiction to red tape--not to mention the high price of unification with East Germany--put Germany into an economic straitjacket. BMW went through its own rough patch in the 1990s after the disastrous acquisition of Britain's Rover Group, but its fortunes have changed markedly since it ditched Rover in 2000. Production has increased steadily, and profits are buoyant. Pretax earnings last year rose 25%, to $5.5 billion, despite the soaring cost of raw materials and the strong...
...German economy is similarly healthy, growing 2.8% last year, and it is once again acting as a powerful motor for the rest of Europe. Surging exports pushed the nation's trade surplus to more than $200 billion. Germany's economy has also undergone significant re-engineering to loosen some of its infamous rigidities. The government has cut corporate taxes and reduced the burden of some nonwage costs on business, such as pensions and health care. It has shaken up its labor market, which has led to a drop in unemployment (although the proportion of jobless, at 8.8%, is still well...
...also driven some hard bargains with its workforce. It began to back away from rigid German working hours in the late 1980s, when it opened a new plant in Regensburg to produce the 3-series. Its goal even then was to decouple the union-regulated workweek from the amount of time its factory was in operation. Management made flexible working hours a condition of its investment in the plant. The demand infuriated the powerful German autoworkers union, IG Metall, but the syndicate had little choice. "Without these restrictions we wouldn't have come up with these solutions...
Toward the end of World War II, a little German boy named Dieter Dengler looked out a second-story window of his house in the Black Forest and saw an American fighter plane skim past him, almost close enough to touch. Its cockpit canopy was open and the child could see the face of the hot young pilot, thrilled by his stunt. From that moment on, Dengler was determined to become a flyer...